A chorus of boos for the burglar
Messiah trumpeter’s special horn is stolen during his visit to Houston
By ALLAN TURNER
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Dec. 28, 2010, 5:50AM

Nathaniel Mayfield

Baroque trumpeter Nathaniel Mayfield performs at a Dec. 11 children’s concert of Handel’s Messiah. A short time later the horn was stolen from his car at a Houston hotel.

The elongated case on the back seat of Nathaniel Mayfield’s car might have contained a rifle. That’s probably what the thief thought when he kicked in a car window to make his grab. If so, the burglar was in for an unpleasant surprise.

The case contained a baroque trumpet, a rare instrument the Austin musician had brought to Houston for a series of Mercury Baroque Ensemble performances of Handel’s Messiah.

With its odd appearance — it’s twice as long as a modern trumpet and has no valves — the horn might be difficult to pawn. It would be virtually impossible, Mayfield noted, for an untrained person to play.

Mayfield, 34, said the horn, a Swiss replica of a 1746 instrument in a German museum, was stolen from his car at a Greenway Plaza-area hotel shortly after noon on Dec. 11. Mayfield, a Juilliard-trained musician whose skill on the difficult instrument has taken him around the world, earlier had performed at a children’s concert at downtown’s Wortham Center.

Police obtained a hotel security video of the thief, who arrived at the hotel in a white car minutes after Mayfield and a companion left to eat lunch at a nearby restaurant. The tape shows the burglar smashing into Mayfield’s car.

The thief bypassed a smaller horn also left in the vehicle.

No arrests have been made.

“We were joking just the day before when we were taking our instruments into a bar. Who would want them? There are no jobs and they’re really hard to play,” Mayfield said.

Mayfield valued the uninsured instrument at about $6,000.

“After the theft I was in shock,” he said. “Since then, it’s gotten worse. The trumpet was an extension of my soul.”

Honored as a Fulbright Scholar and a Presidential Scholar in the Arts, Mayfield has played the baroque trumpet about six years. The instrument, also known as a natural trumpet or clarino trumpet for its speciality of playing notes in the fourth octave, was commonly featured in baroque compositions from 1650 to 1750, a period Mayfield called “the true golden age of trumpets.”